Chapter Text
When the war ended, Paula was the first to declare that she was ready to just be a normal girl again. And for the next few years that was exactly what happened as she continued with her studies and volunteered at her mother’s preschool. But Paula was also a girl with boundless empathy, a keen mind even without psychic powers, and faith strong enough to breach dimensions. She couldn’t forget how good it had felt to help people, using her powers to ease suffering and drive away the corruption of the world.
Still, it came as a surprise to everyone but Ness when she chose to enroll into Eagleland Police Academy.
Passing her classes was a simple matter, even with a few roadblocks. Theoretical studies and understanding all the paperwork she would need was a snap, and conflict resolution was child’s play to someone with her telepathic and empathetic ability. She couldn’t help but feel like that was cheating, just a bit, but no one thought much of it beyond an uncanny ability to ‘read’ people and if it kept situations from escalating she could hardly complain.
Fitness training and self-defense was more difficult, mainly because Paula had been so used to casting PSI attacks and strength boosts that relying on physical ability was disorienting. But after a few weeks she found that it just made the feeling of throwing a sparring partner to the mat (or being thrown to it herself) all the more satisfying. As for learning how to use firearms, though... Well. There was pummeling sentient taxis and cosmic horrors with a frying pan, and then there was coming to terms with the fact that one day you may have to shoot an angry, non-possessed criminal before they shoot you.
It took many late nights at the gym and shooting range to get past that barrier, along with occasional lessons from Jeff and pep talks from her now-boyfriend Ness, but eventually Paula was able to pull herself up to an acceptable skill level and pass her exams. And after six more months of field training, Officer Paula was sworn into Onett’s police force.
Onett itself had grown considerably after the War, though still the smallest of Eagleland’s four main cities, and even with the Sharks disbanded there were enough disturbances for all the road closings to actually have a purpose. After those brief times she visited Ness’ hometown as a child the change was a little disconcerting, but didn’t stop Paula from doing her job and keeping the peace. Her open nature made her well liked by civilians and her fellow officers, and a solid record impressed Captain Strong and earned her several commendations. She and Ness rented an apartment (though it was more her renting an apartment while Ness focused on his studies), and for a while it seemed like maybe they would have a quiet life after all.
When Captain Strong called her to his office, asking if she was willing to accept a transfer request to Fourside PD, Paula had no idea how to respond. The city had always made her uncomfortable after what the media referred to as the “Monotoli Incident,” and it meant moving away from the support of friends and family. But within a night she started feeling that itch again, the reminder that her powers and training could be for small threats as well as large. She accepted the transfer, and after a hurried search for the nearest jewelry store, asked Ness if he would join her.
Their wedding was nothing more than a small ceremony held the day before they moved out of Onett, but news stations nevertheless exploded with sightings of Dr. Jeffery Andonuts and the Dalaam Royal Family.
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Fourside was not as bad as Paula had expected, but there was still a roughness to the city that had persisted after the Monotoli Incident. Fourside PD wasn’t much better, and they certainly weren’t keen on a ‘sweetheart country girl’ coming in to upstage them or push ideas of police reform. Ms. Polestar’s initiation, they decided, would be sending her to try and break up one of the city’s toughest teen gangs from wreaking havoc at the department store and ‘forgetting’ to send along backup.
They laughed at themselves, expecting her to radio in sobbing within ten minutes.
After two hours, some of the more senior officers were confused and worried at the lack of response. When one finally checked in at the department store he saw Paula at the food court, sharing a plate of fries with the gang’s top members and talking about how she and her friends had once saved Threed from sentient piles of puke.
The police department stopped hazing new members after that, though Paula took a certain satisfaction in freezing that officer’s coffee every time she walked past his desk.
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The first time Officer Polestar killed a man was something that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Everyone agreed that it was justified and even necessary, a hostage situation against a serial kidnapper with his gun to a young girl’s head. He had stepped back a split second before Paula fired, and a shot meant to disarm instead went straight through his chest. Even the girl’s relief and gratitude couldn’t stop the psychic feedback, the sensation of suffocating on one’s own blood that reminded Paula of countless battles and that last, desperate prayer into the darkness so many years ago.
It took a long time to even consider returning to work again, Paula took some of this time to reconnect with her friends and old allies, and spent long days walking through the park with her husband and their daughter Madison. By the end of the year, Paula was more determined than ever to build a good, happy life for her family and the city she had come to love.
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A couple years later, Police Corporal Polestar of FPD Central realized that the fire she and her team were investigating was PSI-based. With no physical leads and no way to properly explain it to her team, she couldn’t have been more grateful for their trust as they ventured into the half-demolished building. They found a stairway to the upper levels, where the CSI people had declared to be too unstable to explore, but the only place the fire could have started based on process of elimination.
There, everyone but Paula was shocked to find a young boy unconscious and unharmed amid the wreckage. It was discovered that his parents had been victims of the Mani Mani statue during the Monotoli Incident, and the latent powers passed down to him became pyrokinesis after some ‘friends’ had locked him inside the warehouse as a prank.
The resulting case, and the official reveal of Paula’s abilities, left Fourside’s Police Commissioner apprehensive. If rumors started that the police were using PSI abilities to control the public (and they would, and they did; Corporal Polestar had helped bring some control to her department but it wasn’t enough) there would be huge outcries and protests. It was almost enough to have him discharge Paula on the spot. But the thought of lawsuits, and the loss of image they would suffer for firing one of the children who saved the world all those years ago, managed to stay his hand. His conflict proved unnecessary, though, when Paula announced that she would be resigning from the force in order to pursue more community-based activism and provide support for the parts of Fourside that the police either ignored, or were the root cause of their problems.
Not long after that, Ness brought up the possibility of selling their story, a possibility that Paula hesitated over for a long time. It would mean the end of their little peace, the end of pretending to be normal folks living normal lives. But then she thought of Madison already drawing tomorrow’s events in her sketchbook like Paula herself had done as a child, and that boy in the warehouse who had no one to support and teach him.
She agreed to sell their story, less for the money and more for all the children who would no longer feel lost and alone, and before long the attention died down enough for them to have normal lives after all… or as normal as a family of psychics could be.
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When Dr. Andonuts went missing, Mrs. Polestar of the Everdred Civic Outreach Center had already been collecting stories of kidnapping victims who had reported strange phenomena shortly before vanishing. Most of her work had been sharing resources, helping the families of victims, and trying to help piece together a larger pattern, but her presence had gotten the entire world sharing stories of strange disappearances and unusual sights, of psychic rifts through time and space.
It was a huge undertaking, even for former saviors of the world. It meant long nights on very little sleep, and after a month even the Instant Revitalizing Machine was nothing more than a way to keep Paula’s frazzled mind in check. She was never more grateful for Ness’s presence as she was then, working around her erratic sleeping habits and always having a steak dinner ready on those rare days where they could all eat as a family.
Paula began to have nightmares. Sometimes she would be a child again, praying desperately against that god-awful storm of rage and insanity, waiting for a response that never came. Sometimes she would watch helplessly as everything important in her life – her husband, her daughter, her world – was crushed beneath the feet of an aged yet familiar figure, leaving her to grieve over the life she’d never see again.
Sometimes she dreamed of sunflowers, and a hill where a young boy - no, two of them - stood in front of seven glowing spikes.
As she ran towards them, the boys split up, taking turns to grab hold of the spikes one by one. They vanished as soon as they were touched, and a roar started in Paula's ears that grew louder and louder with every spike pulled, great and terrible and she didn't know whether she was running to stop them or help them and she was too far away regardless and-
That dream was always the worst of the lot, causing Paula to wake up shaking and sweaty. She fumbled until she could feel Ness' hand in the darkness, and would cling to it like a lifeline in a freezing ocean. It was the worst of them because deep down she knew it wasn't a dream at all, but a reminder that someday everything they cared about would come to an end.
And then Ness would stir, turning to smile at her in the faint glow of their digital clock, and Madison would run into the room having been woken up by her mother’s fear.
And they held each other until the dawn as a reminder that here and now, they were alive, and they were happy.
And when the victims began to return home, she was there with the others to help Jeff reunite with his father.